Left 4 Dead: When Life Is Death
by LatentExpression
Summary: The second generation of Infected are obviously the most disturbing, but given the right backstory, the right time and circumstances, contains the chance to return to their former selves. When two creatures discover this, what chaos will ensue?


For the sake of story-related purposes, the respective Special Infected types will be given distinctive names for the sake of this documentary. The names issued to them are in accordance to the National Outbreak Research Borough and are for study and formal identification purposes only, and in no way are to be referenced to their actual meaning or persons. In other words, all IRL aspects are unintentional.

This story follows the recorded exploits of four individual members of this "advanced" undead genome including, by popular terminology: The Hunter, The Boomer, The Witch, and The Smoker. All four of these subjects were euthanized at the end of the examination period due to insufficent methods of reverting their incubated transformations. Some of these subjects may perform above average field expectations.

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Prologue  
**The Witch And The Hunter**

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_Mercy City_

What many would have perceived as a fragile shell of what could formerly be called a human "female", the form that laid silently on the floor had not caused any distress with the humans that had passed it for nearly over an hour following its gruesome murder of a teenage boy who had been riding his bike away from a pile of "similarly" infected beings, dubbed "zombies" by modern and past fiction. In fact, she didn't seem to care anymore, simply deserting her murderous howling and intentions for the heightened rate at which she sulked at the world around her, the very painful world where her beauty, whatever in her past life that may have amounted to, burned the blemishes on her face like sulfuric acid on human flesh if only for the dissolved skin to restore itself just as quickly. Her fingernails, which where three feet in length, scratched thin lines over her cheeks as she moaned, disinterested with the scent of tasty human blood. Perhaps, as it would once be theorized, that the Witch was the least "flesh devouring" of the very carnivorous, if not cannibalistic Infected, and had lost her zest for these meals.

That all changed when she felt the presence of one like her, a creature called the Hunter by modern reporters due to its predatory nature. Indeed, this Hunter was once a lucky predator of wandering organics, usings its powerful joints to propel itself up pipes, tubes, buildings, and virtually any grippable surface and attack its foes from a distance with a mighty lunge. The Hunter was once a scary creature, from behind it could have passed off as a bloodied human survivor in a gray hooded sweater and khaki pants but the moment its unnaturally moon-tinted eyes steeled themselves on a man's brow, that man was doomed from then on out with every step forward he took, because the Hunter never gave up its prey until they were dead, or it was. But this Hunter shared the Witch's oxymoronic behavior, instead choosing to join it in its fasting in a very uncharacteristic pattern. It had to be the most flesh-devouring member of the Infected, ripping open people's jaws, necks, chests, and bowels in search of something only to stop as if they had utterly forgotten what they'd sought. This occasion was a rare exception.

Though no event as perturbing as this would be fufilled unless it progressed into further strangeness, it was one dark day when the Witch heard footsteps faraway. Disinterested, she turned and moped, loud so that the bypasser of her sacred moaning would be wary enough to stay away, but this person did not stop. The Hunter took notice, because the Witch herself appeared to be unwilling to fight even if she was at risk, and bared its arms as it snuck into the shadows of the room that they had stayed together in. A human male, with portly protusions, appeared from within the width of the doorway, a human weapon in his hands.

He was obviously a threat, because no human would have ever approached them with such a weapon without such intentions. It didn't matter, for the humans were but mere food to them. The Hunter was about to pounce, entering half of his lunge as the obese man screamed and tried to force a shotgun shell into its receiver, but The Witch beckoned to him at the last secodn with a melancholic howl, darting between them with even greater speed and shielding the man from the Hunter. The creature moaned with anxiety and caution as the man sped away, less than willing to become food for them lest even food for another group of his brothers. But the Witch would hear no more of it, and instead folded her arms over his, gazing into his face with sad, liquid scarlet pools in her eyes. They walked back to their place of moaning, and sat there for many months until their cravings gradually passed away.

That was when, after listening and observing human survivors for so long after the infection, they had an idea.

The Hunter and The Witch both shared misdirection when it came to what humans referred to them as. A hunter was a being who stalked and or killed a member of an opposite, or potentially akin species, to sustain himself or his kinsmen during long treks or for a period of time using a variety of different skills, tools, and human equipment to trap, saunter, and eventually deprive of its life. A witch was, in modern fiction, a monstrous or cruel being who found pleasure in her generically immortal lifespan performing dangerous and often painful experiments on the world's purest and innocent creatures due to the "clean" nature of their hide, generally hunted so that no other innocents may suffer at their wicked hands. Sure, the two creatures had slaughtered and killed, and as the lack of hunger for human flesh wore away had given them more room in their heads to think and discuss, had been LUCKY to have survived this long to have met each other under such circumstances. But these names were derogatory now, they were above their animalistic cravings.

One human with blond hair had gone over their rooftop, the fire fight ensuing above even made the Hunter growl in anger. Another time, a woman with her child in her arms had crossed across some scaffolding, only to be mauled and thrown off by a burly and often-roaring creature with muscles the size of atom bombs. Before their deaths, they had either pronounced their names to a nearby person, or someone else had screamed their names beforehand. This happened several more times, practically every time someone passed this location, there was one new body murking up the streets or an alleyway somewhere. For these reasons and possibilities, the Hunter and the Witch together desired new names. Names like the humans adorned, names that WERE human.

The Witch had become fond of the name "Lidia", and the Hunter chose the proud word "Cloddenburn", or simply "Clod" for short.

Knowing not what was better or worse, and simply elated to have found names to address each other by, they were content for a little while. But like all good things, that would never have lasted so long as humans lived in Mercy City, or passed through it, constantly seeking shelter and "infecting" Clod and Lidia's dome of happiness, always putting them at risk with their strange, long-range weapons. Clod had discovered from a man who had once served in the human's attack force called the "mill-laa-terry" that these weapons were called "guns", and they fired "bullets" of varying size. Lidia also knew that these projectiles hurt their decomposing skin very much, she didn't like them and she cried every time a human opened up such wounds, which only sent Clod into a fury before retreating into the rafters of the building with her. The human survivors only continued to push them away, building up barricaded settlements with hundreds of these "bullets" contained in small red packages that were shaped like rectangles.

It became so obvious that the humans did not want to share these apartments when a group of insurgents, dressed in green olive uniforms that made Lidia chuckle when she saw them, arrived inside of their sanctuary and opened up orange weapons that hurt them. Clod managed to shatter a window and get to the street, where bushels of his former Infected brothers began to rush to Lidia's aid. But by the time any of them got their, the human "hunters" had been desecrated into piles of fresh Infected supper. When Clod next found Lidia hunkered over a trash can with her once so beautiful claws, her eyes were splashed red and her arms lathered in human blood, warm. That was the first time in all the time he had known her that he had ever seen her kill someone. If it weren't for their apparent "superiority" to their mindless siblings, he wouldn't have resisted for that long.

Cloddenburn and Lidia kept running for a long time then. It was almost impossible to pinpoint their next location, because they didn't stop for anything. Unlike humans, they didn't need to stop for food, water, or rest. And unlike their own kind, the Infected that roamed the streets like bloodthirsty watchdogs, they didn't hunt down the scent of human tissue. It made them wonder what they were, if they could be called human or Infected anymore, and it widened their range of thought, almost overriding the genetic requirements their born atttributes had invoked on them. Transformed, they grew smarter, they learned how to avoid human patrols, and they soon found much better hiding spots from the humans. Clod had never truly lost his innate ability to kill humans, he hated them so very much but not for the desire of eating them. No, he hated them because they had harmed him, and they had harmed the only companion he had ever come to known or protect during his recent adoption of sentience. Lidia had killed also, and with that intimate knowledge of murder intact, they were most certainly set on acquiring a permanent home for themselves, in a manner similar to how the humans had stolen their homes and converted them into human-occupied safehouses.

The mission began in what the humans called "Mercy Hospital", the police had barricaded the upper floors and left gas cans spilled over the bottom floors. It didn't stop them though, fire hurt less than bullets and it only truly hindered the lesser of their brethren, Clod navigated through the morgue while Lidia found a stairwell. They both arrived at the top in minutes, limbs dripping blood, and worked with haste to slaughter the humans stationed there. When they finished, they could hear a strange whirring sound from the rooftop, but the only thing they saw upon reaching it was a black object, something Clod knew the humans called a "Helicopter", floating off into the night sky, and soon into the distance where they would never catch them. It didn't matter, as Lidia embraced him carefully and let joy-colored tears flatten on his chest while her claws shrugged around his back, because they had found a new home.

Together, they watched the moon drop over the horizon and welcomed the new day.

Little did they know that each new day would bring newer consequences.


End file.
